


The Whore of Sussex

by OssaCordis



Series: The Holmes Family Chronicle [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Adultery, Angst, Backstory, Childhood, Divorce, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family, Gen, Kid Fic, Marriage, Origin Story, References to Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Unhappy marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OssaCordis/pseuds/OssaCordis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>July 1983: Sherlock makes his first important deduction at the age of seven, and Mycroft tries to manage the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whore of Sussex

**Author's Note:**

> The modern-day incarnations of Sherlock Holmes et al. belong to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. The plot of this story and any original characters belong to me

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”  
-Albert Camus-

 

**July 1983**

The mercury in the thermometer steadily climbs all week, threatening to top thirty degrees by Saturday. Even in the murky solitude of the library, resting among shadows thrown by heavy curtains and haphazard bookcases, Mycroft can feel a thin rivulet of sweat wending its way down his back. He swipes at it with the loosened tail of his shirt and scowls at the underpowered fan in the window. Most of his school friends are presumably in Greece now, lazing on beaches and eating baklava, or else in Switzerland, climbing mountains and ogling pretty blonde girls with names like Amélie and Estelle and Hélène.

He should be in France.

Aunt Camille and Uncle Tom are in France. Cousin Charles and Cousin Elizabeth are in France. Grand-mère is in France.

He, however, is stuck in Sussex.

The plan was to leave England as soon as his school holiday began, but the Prime Minister had called Father back to London for a week. In the interim, Sherlock somehow terrorized yet another nanny into desertion. And Mummy… well, Mummy sleeps a lot.

A slight breeze tugs at the page of his book, and Mycroft sourly tosses it away, letting it tumble for a metre or so before coming to a violent stop against a claw-footed wingback. A pair of pale eyes glitters at him from under the chair, and Mycroft stifles a groan.

“What do you want, ‘Lock?”

“Bored.” It’s astonishing how he can stretch the word out, creating syllables where there are none and rolling the vowels around in his mouth. A perfect miniature of Mummy. Every modest problem blown into an epic drama.

“Well, what are you doing under that chair?”

Sherlock clambers out and shrugs.

“Do you want to play chess?” Mycroft suggests.

“No. You always win, ‘Croft. I don’t like losing.”

“You will never win if you don’t practice. Would you like to read something together? You can choose the book. Or play violin? I’ll accompany on piano, if you’d like.” This is met with a resounding silence, so Mycroft tries another tactic. “I cannot read your mind, Sherlock. You have to tell me if you want something.”

Sherlock’s face scrunches up in thought for a moment before he replies. “I want to go look at the nest of swifts in the woods.”

It’s almost noon, and the sun overheard will be unbearable. A few harsh rays infiltrate through the library’s curtains and throw glaring pools of light upon the carpet. “Can we do that later, Sherlock? It’s too hot to go out just now.”

“Nelly would have taken me,” Sherlock broods.

“Yes, well. You shouldn’t have scared Nelly off, then, should you?” Mycroft knows his point has struck home by the slump in Sherlock’s shoulders. He feels moderately bad, and switches strategies again. “What if I teach you more deduction skills?”

“You just don’t want to go outside because you’re fat,” Sherlock snipes. It’s a petty and juvenile insult, but it still stings. Mycroft stands and smoothes out the folds in his shirt, fully prepared to leave his younger brother to entertain himself.

“Fine. Never mind. You’re obviously not fit for company right now,” he says coolly, making a concerted effort not to rise to the childish taunt. He’s old enough now, he thinks, that he shouldn’t be bothered by such comments. Or, at least, old enough to behave better.

“No, don’t go, ‘Croft!” Sherlock whines, his hand reaching out to grab Mycroft’s trouser leg. “We can do deductions. I know a lot already, not just the ones you showed me over your Easter holiday! I taught myself more. And Father even taught me a few while you were at school. Well, one. When he wasn’t too busy.”

Mycroft looks down into Sherlock’s anxious face. He’s becoming quite the spoiled brat: mindlessly throwing insults or tantrums when annoyed, scaring off household staff with his antics, and generally being goaded on by a doting Mummy and a disregarding Father. But inside all of that, he’s still a seven-year-old boy, desperate for both affection and routine. “Very well,” he sighs. “We’ll do a few deductions together. Let’s go the kitchen. You can deduce what the cook is going to make for dinner on Sunday, and her favourite hobbies.”

“And you can steal a biscuit,” Sherlock slyly adds. Mycroft gives him a dark look, cowing him into a hastily muttered apology. 

* * *

It feels as though she is floating on a cloud of mauve silk. She tipsily runs her hand through her hair and giggles at the sensation. Her other hand blindly gropes for the bedside table and lifts a clinking glass, slick with condensation, to her mouth.

“Trapped… trapped… trapped…” she murmurs, and this too is inexplicably funny. Gone are the days when she was the protégé of the laboratory, the girlish genius. The striking young daughter of that tragically brilliant physicist, Alan Mathews. One biochemistry degree under her belt, another within striking distance. The would-have-been Dr. Mathews. Oxford’s next great hope for a Nobel Prize.

But it is far too hot to be so dreary today. She sits up in bed and rolls the glass of gin and tonic across her forehead, grunting in relief at its chilly moisture. She can see into the garden from her bed, and the new young gardener from the village down the road is working shirtless under the heat of the sun. He is tanned brown and sleek with sweat, trimming branches of an unruly hedge. The faint sounds of a radio waft through the open window, just under the sighing hum of the fan.

_“Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?”_

How appalling.

She would have tried to seduce the gardener, once upon a time. Now… it is enough to sit and watch through the window, cold tumbler clutched numbingly over her heart and condensation seeping into her dressing gown. She has had quite enough of men, thank you very much. Except for Sherlock. And he is just a boy, and she will make him better than the others.

There is a hesitant knock, and her bedroom door creaks open. “Are you awake, Mummy?”

“Yes, darling. What do want?”

Speak of the devil. Sherlock enters the room with a brilliant smile on his face, holding a tray laden with cheese sandwiches and biscuits and glistening black grapes and a frosted bottle of San Pellegrino. “Mycroft said to bring you lunch. We were in the kitchen doing deductions, and the cook said you hadn’t eaten yet today.”

Mummy pats the bed. “Come up here, darling. Have you eaten lunch? No? We can have a picnic in bed.”

“Picnics are for outdoors,” Sherlock informs her, setting the tray among the disordered bedclothes and scrambling up next to her.

“Indeed,” Mummy agrees. “But today we’ll make an exception.”

“I wanted to go out,” Sherlock says. “There are swifts nesting in the woods. But Mycroft says it’s too hot.”

“You poor thing,” Mummy soothes, stroking his hair and handing him a biscuit. “Maybe later. Or, no, maybe not. Your father is coming home tonight. Isn’t that wonderful?” Her voice catches slightly on the last word, but she presses on. “And then we will be going to France tomorrow morning. To the beach. Do you remember the beach?”

Sherlock nods, scattering crumbs in the process. “I like the seashells. And the birds.”

“And your grand-mère will be there, so you can bring your violin and show her what you’ve learned. And Auntie Camille and Uncle Tom, with your cousins.”

Sherlock’s nose wrinkles. “I don’t like Charles. He’s mean and fat, like Mycroft. And Elizabeth is just a baby.”

Mummy just laughs. “Well, never mind that. At least you are honest, I suppose. But what are you going to play for Grand- mère first? The new Handel? I heard the tutor going over it with you the other day.”

“No, Bach,” Sherlock corrects. “I like the Bach one better.”

“Minuet or Musette?”

“Minuet.”

“Oh, ambitious!” she teases. “Grand- mère will be very impressed! One day, I think you’ll be a better violinist than her.”

Sherlock blushes slightly at the compliment, and distracts himself with a fistful of grapes.

There is another knock on the door, and Mycroft enters without preamble. “Oh, there you are, Sherlock. I thought you were coming back to the kitchen.”

“We’re having a picnic in bed!” Sherlock explains.

“Yes, I can see that.” Mycroft’s lips purse slightly as he surveys Sherlock and Mummy.

“I’ve barely seen you since you came home,” Mummy says. “Why don’t you join us?”

Mycroft’s eyes linger a little too long on the tumbler in her hand. “No,” he says at last. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

Sherlock sticks his tongue out at Mycroft, and Mummy rolls her eyes. “Honestly, Mycroft. You were born about forty years old,” she says, a sharp titter bubbling up in her throat.

For a moment, it looks as if he will change his mind and plop down on the bed after all. But he squares his shoulders and starts to leave.

“Oh, your father is coming back tonight. So, we’ll be leaving tomorrow morning. Are you all packed?”

“Yes,” Mycroft says, avoiding eye contact. “Of course.” He has been packed for days. He never unpacked upon returning from Eton, really. He likes nothing about Sussex; he would prefer not to call this place home. With a final nod to Mummy, he swiftly exits and shuts the door. And when he thinks he is out of earshot, he exhales a deep breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

* * *

The sun begins to set, and the entire house seems to physically relax after the heat of the day. While waiting for dinner, Mycroft at last takes Sherlock into the woods to see the nest of swifts, but they appear to have retired for the night. After a while, giving up hope of seeing so much as one feather, he carries his brother on the short walk to the house, laughing as Sherlock tries to dangle backwards out of his grip.

“I’ll drop you on your head,” he threatens, but there is no ferocity behind the words.

The chauffeur’s car is parked in front of the house, indicating Father’s return. Mycroft sets Sherlock upright on the grass and wipes a smudge of dirt from his face.

“How do you always become so messy?” he asks in wonderment. But it might as well be a rhetorical question, for Sherlock is already running for the front door.

They find Father in the western sitting room with a stack of newspapers. Mummy is there, too, finally dressed and almost serene-looking as she pages through a woman’s magazine. They look almost like the married couples one reads about, Mycroft thinks. Sharing a pot of tea, quietly exchanging remarks on the weather and the articles they are reading and how packing is coming along for their holiday.

Mycroft gives his Father a nod and a casual hello, far too old and embarrassed to hug the man or clamour for attention. Sherlock, however, assails him with a frantic wave of noise and commotion. His mouth moves faster than the eye can catch, breathlessly explaining everything significant – or trivial – that has happened during the past week.

“And Mycroft is teaching me more about deduction,” he concludes, heavily panting for air.

Father gently pushes Sherlock back a bit, as if to see him better, or more likely to prevent him from crowding in so much. He raises his eyebrows in a subtle gesture of approval towards Mycroft. “Excellent. Very good. I taught him well. I believe deduction will be the key to your success, both of you. It’s an invaluable skill to have. The truth is more valuable than anything else in this world.”

“Oh, not now, Siger,” Mummy interrupts. “I wish you wouldn’t harp on and on about deduction. It’s not all you make it out to be. I’d rather Sherlock didn’t learn it, after all. I _resent_ deduction.”

“You resent a good many things, Violette,” Father says. “The list is inexhaustible.”

She glares at him a little, and raises her magazine as if in self-defence. The cover bears a photo of an overly made-up woman and a caption extolling the virtues of balancing career and family. “ _You **can** have it all!”_

“So, tell me what you have learned. Deduce something for me.”

Sherlock looks out of the corner of his eye to Mycroft, who gives a little nod of encouragement. He surveys Father for a moment, proudly straightens his back, and declares, “The Prime Minister is fond of narcissus.”

Father stares incredulously for a few seconds before letting out a deep, hearty laugh. “What? Where on earth did you come up with that idea?”

“You were in London,” Sherlock states.

“Yes,” Father agrees.

“Because the Prime Minister called you back for work.”

“Yes.”

“So you must have spent a lot of time with the Prime Minister and her cabinet.”

“Yes, of course,” Father agrees again. But something deep within Mycroft stirs uneasily. Something in the tone of voice Father used... a bit too impatient.

“And all of her cabinet are men.”

Father furrows his brow. “Where are you going with this, Sherlock?”

Mummy is lowering her magazine slowly and looking back and forth between her husband, Sherlock, and Mycroft.

“I can smell narcissus on your clothes,” Sherlock states plainly. “Perfume, I think. Is it the Prime Minister’s? She must like narcissus.”

Mycroft’s mind overflows with a thousand panicked thoughts, bumping into each other and expanding and cascading to terrible conclusions. In a brief and petrifying flash of prescience, he knows exactly what is about to happen.

“Narcissus,” Mummy exhales. “How... _fitting_.”

“Violette,” Father says with a hint of warning in his voice.

Mummy throws back her head and laughs, but it is all wrong. On the edge of hysteria. “I might have known! I… I… I should have known. I didn’t think you were the sort, you sexless rat. But…”

Father half-way rises to his feet, and then cautiously sinks back into his chair. Mycroft reaches for Sherlock, grabbing onto a single sleeve and pulling him away from Father.

“So, who is she? This woman you go to see under pretence of having to work in London?”

“I thought the Prime Minister –” Sherlock begins, but Mycroft firmly clamps a hand over his mouth.

“Not _now_ ,” he hisses.

“I think that’s a bit rich coming from you.” Father’s voice has dropped a pitch or two and become a lot colder and harsher in mere seconds.

“Excuse me?” Violette shrilly asks.

“As if I did not know,” Siger states. “You thought I was _blind_ all those years. You thought you were so clever. All those lovers. All those other men you kept running in circles, behind my back. And I _let_ you. Because you would have been completely insufferable if you didn’t have your stupid little games.”

Mycroft tries to steer Sherlock out of the room by his shoulders, but his feet are firmly planted for a seven-year-old boy. His mouth is open and his eyes are squinted in concentration. But he cannot deduce this.

“You. You.” Mummy’s jaw clenches and unclenches in uncontrollable fury. “You selfish man. You do not _allow_ me to do anything! I act of my own free will!”

“You were always such an idiot, Violette,” Siger snidely laughs.

“This isn’t about me!” she shouts. “I have been _faithful_ , Siger. For _seven_ years! Seven years of chastity, seven years of trying to be a better person, a better mother, a better wife to a husband who pretends I do not exist! Seven. Years. Since he,” she jabs a finger in Sherlock’s direction, “was born. I am not a _whore_.”

“You said that truth is the most valuable thing in the world. But you _lied_.” There is a broken tremble in Sherlock’s tone as he breaks in and stares down his father.

“Shut _up_ , Sherlock!” Mummy shrieks. “Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up! You have ruined _everything_.”

Sherlock reels. She has never said an unkind word to him in his life. He couldn’t be more stunned if she had slapped him across the face. Mycroft, at last stirring into action, seizes Sherlock around the waist and lofts him across his shoulder.

“Put me down!” Sherlock screams.

“No. No. Absolutely not. We’re leaving,” Mycroft says. He gives both of his parents a foul look as he hauls Sherlock from the room.

They eventually find themselves in the kitchen, the cook pressing sympathetic cups of tea into Mycroft’s hands, and a cup of apple juice for Sherlock. She offers them dinner, already prepared and ready to be sent to the dining room, if not for the cataclysm unfolding above them. Mycroft eats like a starving man, anxiously choking down forkfuls to stave off the feeling of emptiness that has settled over him; Sherlock picks uneasily at his plate, not consuming a single mouthful. Upstairs, the shouting continues indistinctly for over an hour.

By the times it stops, night has fallen. Mycroft aimlessly wanders through the house for awhile, restlessly moving up and down dark staircases and through shadowy corridors. He carries Sherlock, completely limp and quiet, until his arms ache and his back strains. The boy at last drifts into troubled sleep, and Mycroft deposits him on a chair in the library. Even in slumber, he looks tense.

There is a liquor cabinet in the library: a beautiful, polished, cherry antique. Mycroft hesitates before it, surveying the range of clear and amber liquids in cut-glass bottles. He thinks about Mummy, and wonders if it helps when she drinks. He lifts one bottle of clear liquid, uncaps it, and sniffs. Gin. He recaps it and sets it down softly, deciding against it after all.

* * *

Father is in his study, mutely chain-smoking at his desk. His thoughts betray himself in the way his hands give a slight shake as he lights a new cigarette, though he is otherwise composed. Mycroft peers around the door, then enters and gracelessly sinks into a chair without asking for permission to encroach on his father’s territory; it’s as if his legs are suddenly too long and he has forgotten what to do with his elbows, and his tongue is a heavy and foreign implement within his own mouth. The overall sensation is of a kind of curious disembodiment; this might just as well be happening to someone else.

The hush seamlessly stretches for several minutes before Father speaks. “You don’t know – you don’t understand, Mycroft. You’re just a boy. You cannot _begin_ to understand what it is like to be married to that woman. That _sociopath_.” He draws in a deep breath of smoke, and exhales it again with a hollow laugh. “I don’t even like this brand of cigarettes. I started smoking them in 1969. On that joyless occasion we called our honeymoon. The French Riviera – God, I hate that place. And the only damned cigarettes I could find the whole week were these God-awful Gauloises.”

Mycroft blankly looks straight ahead, unsure of what to say or do, if anything. Father surveys him through a thick cloud of blue smoke.

“I’ve never loved her. That must be hard for you to hear, Mycroft. About your mother. But it’s true.”

“But she loves you,” Mycroft insists, his voice quieter and weaker than he intended, “in her way.”

Father shrugs, waves a dismissive hand. “Maybe. I can never tell with her. I thought I had her figured out the first night I met her, but she runs hot and cold. Wholly unpredictable. Utterly mad.”

Mycroft surveys his shoes, not wanting to make eye contact anymore.

“I’ve – well – I’ve always loved you, though, Mycroft. You were my pride and joy from the start. Just because that woman is your mother – you couldn’t have helped that. But I do love you. My son.”

“What about Sherlock?” Mycroft mumbles, ashamed that he is asking the question.

The only sounds are of Father stubbing out one cigarette in the ashtray and then lighting yet another. “Sherlock is a problem, isn’t he?” he says at last. “And I certainly haven’t helped, given the circumstances.”

“You’re never here anymore.” Mycroft wants it to sound like an accusation, but it comes out as a whine.

“No,” Father agrees. “No, I’m not.”

Mycroft feels heavy and tired and confused. He cannot logic his way through this.

“You will take care of him, won’t you?” Father asks, scrubbing one hand wearily over his face.

“What?”

“I have to leave, Mycroft. I’m going away.”

For the first time in at least five years, tears begin to prickle at the corners of his eyes. “I… I don’t want –”

Father makes a gentle shushing noise. “It will be better for everyone if Violette and I are separate. She’ll come to agree with me, eventually.”

“Are you going to file for divorce?” Mycroft asks, trying to be mature and practical about this whole matter.

Father shrugs. “I’ll let Violette file, if she wants. But I don’t think she will. It doesn’t matter one way or another, to me. But, you need to watch over Sherlock, when you can. When you’re on your school holidays, and the like.”

“That’s what Mummy told me. It’s the first thing I remember about Sherlock,” Mycroft reflects. “She told me I needed to protect him.”

“Someone should,” Father says sombrely. “Since neither Violette nor I do, really.”

There is a tangle of baffling emotions swirling around in Mycroft’s mind, and his heart feels tight, like it will burst at any moment.

Father stands and stubs out his cigarette. “I think I should retire and retrieve a few things from my rooms. I’ll be gone when you wake up in the morning.”

“When will –” The words catch in Mycroft’s throat, and he cannot force them out.

“I’m not entirely abandoning you and Sherlock.” Father squeezes his shoulder in a gesture of reassurance, but it feels like an empty promise. “You can divide your holidays between us. And write. Write plenty. Telephone, if you like. I’ll give you my number. I have another flat in London – other than the family house, where I stay when – but, perhaps, I – no, maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. Don’t tell Violette.” And with that, he is gone.

Mycroft sits very still for a long time, until the clock in Father’s study chimes one in the morning. When he finally drags himself up the stairs to his bedroom, it feels as though he is wading through knee-deep treacle. He pauses outside of Father’s bedroom door, surveying a sliver of light projecting into the hallway and listening to the soft, shuffling sounds of packing from within.

His own bedroom feels sickly warm, so he strips the bedclothes back and lies uncovered in the darkness. Though thoroughly exhausted, he does not fall asleep until he hears the first birds of the morning, and the low rumble of a car carrying his father away to the train station.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed and un-Britpicked as per usual… so point out any errors if you see them, and I’ll correct them.
> 
> Camille is meant to be Violette’s sister, and her children are Mycroft and Sherlock’s first cousins. I don't imagine that there are too many extended relatives on the Holmes side of the family.
> 
> As it stands now, there will be four to five more parts in this series. Two of them are actively in progress right now, but without set completion dates. I have a tumblr account where I post progress updates, excerpts of what I've recently written, etc. if you are interested in following along!


End file.
